This is one of those inside-baseball posts, but it's very good news for the development community.

The nominee for the new head of the United Nations Development Program -- replacing Mark Malloch Brown who has moved to Kofi Annan's chief of staff -- is Kemal Dervis from Turkey. For those of you who have read Sebastian Mallaby's book on Jim Wolfensohn's stint at the World Bank, you'll remember Kemal as one of the most colorful characters in one of Mallaby's most riveting tales. Kemal was the World Bank manager under whom the extraordinarily difficult and innovative Bosnia emergency assistance package was put together in 1994 -- which was crucial to the success of bringing Dayton to a conclusion. And as Mallaby notes [p. 121]:

a few years later, when he returned to Turkey to take up an appointment as his country's finance minister, the stock market jumped as his plane landed in Ankara and he was greeted as a savior.

I'm not going so far as to hail Kemal Dervis as UNDP's "savior," although given UNDP's leading role regarding the Millennium Development Goals and an uncertain mandate with respect to crisis prevention and recovery, this is one challenging job. It's great to see someone who is both a fine mind and a risk-taker in a major leadership role in the international civil service. Kudos to Kofi for selecting him from among 100 candidates.

Here's a snip from the UN press release today:

UNDP is the largest of the independently funded UN agencies and, under its special General Assembly mandate, leads the UN's work on eradicating extreme poverty and promoting good governance in the developing world. Its staff is active in 166 countries.

Mr. Dervis' current activities, such as participation in the Global Progressive Forum and the Progressive Governance Network, have been aimed at "finding ways to make globalization into a more stable and inclusive process and to further international cooperation," UNDP said.

He is the author of a book published last month called "For Better Globalization," speaks fluent English, French and German, besides Turkish, and holds a doctorate in economics from Princeton University and Master's and Bachelor's degrees from the London School of Economics (LSE).

{cross-posted at Liberals Against Terrorism}

Recently I've been feeling bombarded by a strange and perhaps unholy alliance of George Bush and Condi Rice, Kofi Annan, Jacques Chirac and Lula, Tony Blair, Jeffrey Sachs, Bono and assorted denizens of the op-ed pages. Although each speaker or author has a preferred emphasis and a few code words for his or her target audience, they share a remarkably consistent vocabulary and program. "Freedom" is extolled as humanity's universal goal, and we are reminded of the urgent need to promote human dignity and protect the rights of the vulnerable (especially women). The march of freedom is then -- to one degree or another depending on the political agenda of the speaker or author -- combined with exhortations to make hunger and disease a thing of the past. And all claim that we must seize a unique moment of opportunity to change the globe in the 21st century.

Development -- economic and social as well as political -- is back in the spotlight, and not only in the Middle East. Although the international community is still reverberating from the Iraq invasion and its aftermath and continues to grapple with "what is terrorism" and Iranian nukes, for the moment security issues are not crowding out the rest of the international agenda. Significant discussions have already begun and are scheduled in the coming months on specific UN programs and reforms and G-8 initiatives. And as Paul Wolfowitz indicated when the World Bank's Board approved his nomination last week, the annual meetings of the Bretton Woods institutions this year are going to have a hefty set of issues of their own.

In self defense, I've started to try to make sense of the various viewpoints and proposals -- where they overlap, where they conflict -- and the political positions being taken by major donor and developing countries as well as the broader development community. I've begun plowing through a whole host of background papers, assessments, reports and so forth. I've still got a long ways to go -- just locating the organizations and websites that have relevant documentation, to say nothing of inventorying all of Sachs' productions, is an undertaking in itself. From my initial forays into the piles of e-docs, however, I already have some common reactions and concerns.

These concerns coalesced for me when I came across an article in the CS Monitor on the surprisingly large advances being made in reducing the incidence of female circumcision in Senegal. The specific progress is itself noteworthy and encouraging. But more compelling for me personally, the brief description of how this program has been able to make major headway, dealing with what has been an intractable issue, reminded me of some of the lessons I've learned from experience about what development is.

The "secret" of informed choice -- changing mentalities in Senegal

Tostan is a human rights agency in Senegal that seems to have found a magic formula for eradicating the practice of female circumscion or female genetal mutilation (FGM). Their secret: encouraging people to choose within a context of extensive education and support on human rights, womens' health, and economic development.

Mike Crawley of the CS Monitor describes the scope of the problem and the changes being seen in Senegal:

Excision of all or part of the female sexual organs before puberty has long been considered a prerequisite for marriage among many of the pastoral cultures immediately south of the Sahara and in the Horn of Africa. Despite growing awareness of the health risks, which can affect childbirth, parents continue carrying out the practice because they fear their daughters won't otherwise be able to find a husband.
[...]
Back in 1997, 13 Senegalese villages publicly declared that they would no longer permit female circumcision, or female genital mutilation (FGM) as it's called by critics. In the eight years since, the number has grown to 1,527, representing 30 percent of Senegalese communities where FGM has been practiced. Dozens more villages are preparing to make similar declarations in the coming months.

Campaigners have tried for decades to bring an end to FGM. But their tactics of providing alternative employment to the circumcisers, introducing alternative rites of passage for girls, or demanding legislation to outlaw the practice have all failed to make a dent: an estimated 2 million girls in about 26 African countries are circumcised every year.

Tostan, by contrast, doesn't focus on FGM but rather on the broader place of women and children within the promotion of health and economic development of the community. according to Molly Melching, the Texas-born director of Tostan who has lived in Senegal for more than two decades.

Once Tostan commences its program of health, human rights education, and economic development in a village, it typically takes two to three years before citizens decide that they want to abandon FGM, says Ms. Melching. The public declarations the villages make, amid vibrant celebrations with music, dancing, and speeches from elders and prominent citizens, generally contain other statements about respect for women's rights and children's education.

The declarations are also coming from places where Tostan staff have never set foot. Enthusiastic villagers are taking it upon themselves to talk to neighboring villages, causing the movement to spread even more quickly.
[...]
As more villages publicly announce that they are abandoning the practice, Tostan says others begin realizing it may no longer be a marriage requirement, momentum builds, and the number of villages following suit snowballs.

Change is accelerating, and spreading beyond the original areas of Senegal to other countries in the region, as the pressures of social conformity shift. Gerry Mackie, a professor at Notre Dame, sees the process as eventually reaching a "tipping point," after which change becomes the new norm. He sees an analogy to foot-binding in China, where the practice was virtually eliminated within a generation.

Change doesn't come easily or automatically, however. These changes are not perceived universally as positive, especially at the beginning. They represent real threats to social structures, to idenity, to livelihoods, to the very ability to survive to the extent that girls depends on marriagability in a near-subsistence economy. The changes must confront and overcome very strong fears. A great deal of patient work is required. Even concrete positive experiences don't bring rapid acceptance. Mike Crawley explains that Tostan has become, in some sense, a victim of its own success as its reputation becomes more widespread.

Particularly in northern Senegal where resistance to ending the practice remains strong, some villages have protested and rioted to dissuade the organization from doing any sort of work.

Here in Ker Simbara there was similar - albeit less heated - initial refusal to listen to visiting women from nearby Malicounda Bambara, the village where the first anti-FGM declaration was made, says Imam Demba Diawara. But the public declarations soon made the issue of excision "the talk of the town," he says.

The debate that ensued was a big shift from the previously secretive approach to the practice, says Ramata Sow, who staffs the local clinic and nursery. "No one talked about the health troubles before - it's a difficult subject," she says.

Ker Simbara eventually declared in 1999 that its citizens would no longer practice female circumcision. Ms. Sow's family illustrates the transformation. She circumcised her eldest daughter, but her two youngest, Sadio, 13, and Nabou, 7, and her granddaughter Duma, 2, are not circumcised.

"I will never do it again," she declares. "Things have changed."

The United Nations Childrens' Fund (UNICEF) is looking to Tostan as a model.

"The Tostan approach is working because it's a holistic approach, and it works with communities," says Lalla Toure, UNICEF's regional adviser for women's health. "The starting point is not female genital mutilation; it's about rights, it's about health, it's about development. We think that's the best approach."

Development at the "retail" level -- local ownership

Reading about the Tostan approach brought into focus what was bothering me about so much of what I'd been hearing from the promoters of freedom, human rights, the end of poverty, and global development. The implicit mental model behind so many of these strategies, challenges, initiatives and campaigns is that the world of the developed liberal democracies holds the keys to success. That postive development would result if "we" just got rid of the tyrants, or pushed harder for reforms, or gave more money, or were more "efficient" at planning and coordinating so that the money gets to the "right" people, (etc., etc., etc., as a certain King of Siam would say to his development adviser).

I don't want to suggest that the various "calls to action" are in themselves inappropriate or harmful. I believe strongly that development assistance is essential -- that indeed many countries or societies need an external push or a helping hand to break out of a host of circumstances in which they find themselves locked -- not just due to their history, culture or policies of their own devising but external condtitions beyond their control such as the "givens" of geography or the neighborhood they live in. The high-profile political initiatives are clearly the only way to draw media attention to critical global issues, and they are undoubtedly needed to mobilize attention, resources and action.

But I do think we risk doing considerable mischief, as well as failing to meet the high expectations being set by the politicians, if our mental model stays fixed at the "grand initiatives" level and doesn't start at the bottom with the individuals we are trying to help. We must be able to separate the "wholesale" function -- the critical role that central leadership must play in bringing issues to the fore and, during the brief moment the world is paying attention, mobiliizng political will and resource commitments for the future -- from the "retail" function -- the medium and long-term, patient support of emergent transformative processes that can't be sequenced or planned and that require decentralized, responsive, adaptable, highly flexible forms of assistance.

Focusing where "the rubber meets the road" has led development agencies to perhaps the most important lesson learned over the past decade or so -- the importance of "local ownership" of programs or initiatives to liberalize or create new political, economic and social structures. By "local" I don't t simply mean the head of the local government ministry. "Local" means truly engaging people who are actually going to be active in or affected by the initiatives or policies or projects. Because ultimately that's where meaningful, sustainable change occurs.

The developed liberal democracies can encourage positive change through providing resources -- ideas, know-how, experience, money, and sometimes security -- and cheerleading, the importance of which should not be underestimated. The developed countries and the international community more broadly can signal displeasure by withholding resources, expressingly loud disapproval, or putting assorted pressures on uncooperative regimes.

The development mantra must, however, be "it's their country, their society." That is certainly an important lesson from Tostan in Senegal. Similarly, the current political process in Iraq is reminding us daily that only the Iraqis can, in the final analysis, solve their own problems. We can make their job harder or easier; we can expand or limit the choices they have available. But only they can decide which of a multitude of competing objectives are their top priorities, and how to manage, for good or ill, the inevitable tradeoffs. Top-down, externally imposed development -- whether political, economic or social -- rarely works as well as expected, is only the first step of a long process, and is replete with unintended (often negative, sometimes positive) consequences. The same is often true within countries that attempt to impose top-down change.

Development at the "retail" level -- changing complex systems versus delivering projects

In addition to the need for "local ownership," the Tostan story highlights another important insight about the development process. First and foremost, political, economic and social development are changes of "mentality" -- shifts in attitudes, expectations and incentives that affect behavior. [see ftnt] Some of the most valuable outside interventions don't implement change directly. Their most powerful impact emerges from the ways they encourage a gradual erosion of mental prisons and give individuals a sense that they have more choices and more control over their own lives. To steal a phrase from Amartya Sen, it's "development as freedom."

Mental prisons constrain both imagination and action. They are constructed from a host of fears, anxieties, rigidities, and limits -- from fear of a dictator or of another ethnic group, from social conventions, from simple ignorance of alternatives, or from a sense of powerlessness that a society never rewards initiative or that opportunity is the privilege of a few. Each time we try to encourage positive change, we need to understand the nature of and connection among the constraints on both imagination and action -- and take them into account when we try to help. We also need to see something as seemingly simple as the political, economic and social development of a village as a complex system that is always changing, and our development interventions need to be continually adjusted and adapted to respond to those changes. That basic principle -- "mentality" is the primary means by which ongoing change of complex systems occurs -- is at play whether we're dealing with demands for fair elections, freedom of the press, the status of women, expanding economic activity, reforming the judiciary, AIDS, or access to clean drinking water. And that is the case whether changes in mentality occur at a glacial pace or are accelerated in response to some sort of exogenous shock.

This indirect, gradual, complex, "mentality"-based nature of the development process presents some real dilemmas for furnishing development assistance at the retail level. Clearly, "project design" is a major challenge if what we are dealing with are processes that depend on the interconnected effects of the unpredictable shifting of attitudes and behavior, which may not really be felt until "tipping points" are reached. Management "metrics," predictive models and accountability mechanisms are hard to apply to processes that lack a clear sequential logic or fail to demonstrate, at least at a project level, a close "causality" connection between specific inputs and outputs. Attempts to produce projects that can demonstrate to financial contributors (or members of Congress) "what I got for my money" may actually serve only to waste that money. Insistence on eliminating overlap or competing approaches may be faux efficiencies. Project selection is frequently more an art than a science -- the closest analogy I've found is to venture capital, where success is often as much a matter of betting on the right horse as on choosing the best business plan, and the number of "losers" far exceeds the number of "superperforming winners". Replicability and scalability are also, like VC, often a major challenge.

Yet simply because the transformation of "mentality" is too hard to control, measure or predict, and just because "results" may be only indirect and come years after a project completion report is filed, doesn't mean we can ignore it. Without putting mentality, incentives and behavior at the center of our understanding of development -- whether political, economic or social -- we risk wasting resources or, worse, violating the cardinal principle of development assistance, "first, do no harm."

Back to "wholesale"

The messy reality of the development process makes it difficult to communicate about development to the general public. I don't envy the "wholesalers" who have to imply that we have answers when the only thing we know for sure is that there are no easily duplicated recipes for success.

The "retail" issues are also hard to capture in stirring speeches that call the developed world to the glorious mission of making our inreasingly interconnected and interdependent globe a better place. And in a PowerPoint world, I won't hold George Bush or Kofi Annan to the details. I am encouraged that many recent speeches, even by US officials such as Condi Rice and Karen Hughes, are peppered with the code words that the development community uses when they talk about sustained, multifaceted engagement and complex systems, such as "partnership," "listening," "learning," "long-term," even "generations."

I'll just have to keep my "retail" principles in mind, with the switch on my hubris-detector in the "on" position, as I read the voluminous quantities of fine print.

---

Note: I've chosen "mentality" because that is in fact the short-hand term most frequently used by clients with whom I've worked in developing financial and legal systems in a number of countries. It is truly striking how reformers, regardless of country, share the frustration that the true impact of changes they are tryiing to implement today will not be realized until a new generation emerges which isn't trapped in old ways of thinking. As I am using "mentality," it is shorthand intended to capture most of the elements development economists consider when they use the terms "incentives" and "institutions."

In The Elusive Quest for Growth, William Easterly's study of what development economists do and don't know about promoting growth, Easterly focuses on the importance of "incentives" to effective development, with which I wholeheartedly concur. I find, however, that "mentality" is more descriptive than "incentives" when going beyond the "growth conundrum" or the operations of specific economic institutions. When discussing development writ large, including political and social change, "mentality" more easily captures the importance of cultural worldviews and social and political expectations and conventions. The term "institutions" has become another important concept closely related to "incentives" in development economists' lingo, with the focus primarily on the creation or reform of formal political, legal and economic structures. Within the notion of "mentality," I am rather casually including "institutions" in their broader sense, including socially-shared "identity" factors such as religion, ethnicity and gender and informal social structures and conventions. That's not to suggest, however, that most aspects of social structures, attitudes and behavior that I'm including in "mentality" could not be expressed and analyzed in terms of incentives and instituitons. More on Easterly at a later date.

So Paul Wolfowitz is going to be the new head of the World Bank, with a term of office, barring personal catastrophe, of at least the next five years. The post-JDW (James D Wolfensohn) era was always going to be interesting for the Bank, especially in light of the tensions, upheavals and resentments produced by the Iraq war. Now it's going to be even more challenging, with a leading architect of that war at the helm.

I would certainly not have selected Mr. Wolfowitz if I had the power of nomination. But it is done, he has now been unanimously approved by the Bank's Board, and pace Brad DeLong with whom I agree far more often than not, I think it is time to shift our attention from Wolfowitz the Pentagon official, or Wolfowitz the controversial choice to lead the Bank, to Wolfowitz the international civil servant.

Those of us who believe the World Bank has an important role to play in both making the world a better place and in US foreign policy need to think about what we should be doing to help the institution succeed. And as distasteful as that may be for some, in the coming months that may mean rising to the defense of the Bank and its President against a host of narrow political agendas that wish to pull the Bank off into one meaningless or ineffectual direction or another.

As I've noted before, the Bush Administration could have saddled the Bank with a much worse burden. By background and temperament Paul Wolfowitz appears superior to any of the minor luminaries whose names were in common circulation prior to his nomination. Wolfowitz shares with much of the Bank's staff many of the ambitions and aspirations for the constructive roles the institution can play in development. Under the old principle that "where you stand depends on where you sit," it's likely that a number of the biases he will inevitably bring with him from the Pentagon will begin to disolve earlier rather than later. He has made no indication to date that he has any intention of Meltzerizing the Bank -- he is openly equating his "success" with the Bank's "success," not with dismantling the institution or redirecting it from its overarching goals.

In fact, the common criticism directed at JDW -- lack of focus -- may be equally difficult for Wolfowitz to avoid. Based on initial signals of an enthusiasm for linking economic and political development -- as well as the general discomfort the Bush Administration evinces with social development-oriented activities of many UN agencies -- the risk to the Bank instead may be that it becomes the preferred agency for a hodgepodge of US political priorities and pet-projects.

A US-dominated political agenda would threaten the Bank in a number of ways far more serious than the relatively simple problem of dissipating staff and budget resources. It goes to the heart of the credibility crisis that Wolfowitz' appointment presents for the Bank. As I explained several weeks ago when the nomination was announced:

[O]ne of [JDW's] major achievements was to reduce the level of suspicion about the Bank's agenda(s) with at least a portion of the NGO-civil society world. At a very high cost, I might add, and as [Sebastian] Mallaby also notes, many of these groups will never be satisfied, so there's a legitimate debate about whether [JDW] should have invested so much in the effort.

But the Wolfowitz appointment takes what progress there has been and basically tosses it in the garbage can. And that's the case regardless of any personal views or concrete actions of Wolfowitz himself in the new job. The symbolism -- that the US owns the Bank and can do with it what it will -- is how it's going to be read across the globe.

The irony is that one of the few really strong consensus items in recent years has been the importance of the locals "owning" their own development strategies and projects, and the broader need for the developing countries to feel they've an ownership stake in the multilateral institutions. Again, I think the "local ownership" theme has sometimes gotten a bit out of hand with some of the "comprehensive development strategy" stuff that was JDW's crowning glory. But there's an important bit of wisdom there, and it represented an essential corrective for a Washington-centered institution that had in many ways lost its way. Seems, however, that the message hasn't penetrated the Oval Office.

The first two years in the job for Wolfowitz, at a minimum, will be one of proving himself and reproving the Bank. Very trying times.

The staff face the challenge of credibility with individual client countries on specific projects. This will exacerbate the always-present tensions, sub-texts and hidden agendas (suspected or real) regarding which projects are selected, how they are designed, how they are approved. But beyond the difficulties for the staff, the credibility question presents a major problem for the Bank as a whole. As I noted earlier:

There's already enough opposition to the mythical Washington Consensus, and this will add enormous fuel to the anti-globalization fires as well. The super anti-globalizers will see this as one great big present from Santa, and the staff know it.

Wolfowitz could personally be the greatest thing since sliced bread, but the Bank is going to get saddled with a lot of his baggage. There will definitely be a "proving period" for him to get it right, or not. And that's assuming the US doesn't come into more intense conflict with anybody else, e.g. Iran, and have that blowback on him and the Bank.

Those trying times for the Bank and its staff will be brought into sharp focus by the debates to come over the next six months regarding Tony Blair's July push for a major G-7 Africa-centered anti-poverty agenda and a reassessment in September, in the context of the broader UN reforms, of progress on the Millennium Development Goals. Wolfowitz' background and White House connections will not make it easy for him to navigate the inevitable highly-politicized pulls on the Bank that will come from every direction. If he looks to be making a hash of things, then I'll criticize. But for the sake of the countries the Bank is designed to help, and the broader health of the international system, I wish him all the best.